


The Seat of Tender Emotion

by GeraniumSky



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s02e13 Mizumono
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 05:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6598048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeraniumSky/pseuds/GeraniumSky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some indeterminate time after the series ends, Will asks Hannibal a question about the events of Mizumono.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seat of Tender Emotion

**Author's Note:**

> After determinedly saying 'no way am I watching Hannibal' during its television run, I've fallen down the Murder Husbands rabbit hole anyway. I've watched only as far as the end of season 2 so far, but had Mizumono feelings that needed to be exorcised. There may be content here that will be contradicted by events in season 3, but if readers can maybe regard this as my personal season hiatus? That would be nice.

Hannibal’s hair was very short for him, almost but not quite a brush-cut, and Will ran his hand along it, enjoying the texture. Hannibal had a full but well-trimmed beard also, handsomely greying and amazingly soft. It tickled against Will’s skin now and again, as Hannibal licked fervently along the long line of the scar that ran across his belly.

“You ever regret that?"

If Hannibal were less refined, less elegant, less controlled, Will might call that expression Hannibal’s ‘are you shitting me?’ face. Clearly, it couldn’t possibly be called that.

“No.” Hannibal didn’t bend his head to its previous work. He was obviously questioning why Will had broken his mood, and a strange and illicit thrill at the openness of Hannibal’s face ran through Will, somewhere behind that particular scar.

“Not even a little?”

Hannibal sighed and lay on his back in a pose of martyred resignation. “I regret the circumstances, obviously. But I had cause.”

“I guess you could say that,” Will said in arid tones.

Hannibal rolled to his side, lying flat on the mattress, face comparatively hidden, and his finger traced the scar once more, and then pinched at the inner end of it. It hurt, but barring a slight withdrawal of stomach muscles, Will refused to flinch or wince. “I guess you could say that too. You didn’t run. You didn’t attempt to shoot me. You let me open you up, and you clutched at me, as if for comfort.” There was silence for a moment. “Looking back from our more comfortable position now, I can regard that as a charming gesture of atonement, or the beginnings of it. At the time I found it… insufficient.”

“I know how insufficient you found it.”

A slightly longer pause. “That, I might occasionally regret. But I wanted to hurt you. To gut you as you had gutted me. I had neither time nor opportunity to indulge any deeper symbolism.” Hannibal’s hand rubbed lower, heading into pelvis territory, but not quite. “Why this interrogation?”

“You pay a lot of attention to that scar when we’re in bed.”

“It’s my mark upon you.”

“I just wonder if there’s anything more to it than that.”

“And your admirable intellectual and empathic capacities can’t discern a satisfactory answer?”

“Asking is more fun. Finding out how that makes you feel, the old-fashioned way.” Will couldn’t resist a small dagger twist of emphasis on ‘feel’.

Hannibal only chuckled – a belly laugh in someone else.

“Aeschylus and other ancients believed that the bowels were the seat of powerful, reckless emotion. Anger, violent love. The Jews, in comparison, thought that the bowels were the seat of more tender emotions such as mercy.”

“You see. You got some symbolism in after all.” Will remembered a quote from a Bible-thumping teacher that had left his fifth-grade class in fits of inappropriate and soon to be punished giggles. “You thought that I had no bowels of compassion.”

“Indeed.”

Will looked up at the ceiling a moment, remembering pain and hospital smells and humiliations. “You came dangerously close to making sure I had no bowels at all. Would my stomach still be so fascinating if I’d been permanently stuck with a colostomy bag?”

Hannibal climbed up the bed to stare into his face. “Men such as you and I can afford neither mystery nor disgust when it comes to the human body.” Prolonged eyeballing and impeccable syntax made the point that Hannibal was bored now, before a sly smile crossed his face. “We would no doubt have managed somehow.” 

“Aesthetic considerations aside, it would have complicated being on the run.”

“Yes, so how fortunate that you received nothing more awkward than this lovely little thing.” Deft fingers traced it once more, but Hannibal gently snuggled his face against Will’s neck and head. It was comforting, in a way that Will was abashedly sure was because all that short, trimmed face-fur reminded him of contact with his dogs.

Some things he was fearless about saying out loud, but not that one, even if he suspected that Hannibal, damn him, knew it already.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm Geraniumsky at tumblr as well. It's mainly reblogs of as much Hannibal fan art as I can find right now. There might be an occasional episode commentary as I delve into season 3.


End file.
